“Goin’ out in this, Mr. Ellery!” exclaimed Keziah, in amazement, as the minister put on his hat and coat about seven that evening.  “Sakes alive! you won’t be able to see the way to the gate.  It’s as dark as a nigger’s pocket and thicker than young ones in a poor man’s family, as my father used to say.  You’ll be wet through.  Where in the world are you bound for this night?”

The minister equivocated.  He said he had been in the house all day and felt like a walk.

“Well, take an umbrella, then,” was the housekeeper’s advice.  “You’ll need it before you get back, I cal’late.”

It was dark enough and thick enough, in all conscience.  The main road was a black, wet void, through which gleams from lighted windows were but vague, yellow blotches.  The umbrella was useful in the same way that a blind man’s cane is useful, in feeling the way.  The two or three stragglers who met the minister carried lanterns.  One of these stragglers was Mr. Pepper.  Kyan was astonished.

“Well, I snum!” cried Kyan, raising the lantern.  “If ’tain’t Mr. Ellery.  Where you bound this kind of night?”

Before the minister could answer, a stately figure appeared and joined the pair.  Lavinia, of course.

“Well, Mr. Ellery,” she said.  “Ain’t you lost, out in this fog?  Anybody sick?”

No, no one was sick.

“That’s a mercy.  Goin’ callin’, be you?”

“No.”

“Hum!  Queer weather for a walk, I call it.  Won’t be many out to-night, except Come-Outers goin’ to holler their lungs loose at prayer meetin’.  He, he!  You ain’t turned Come-Outer, have you, Mr. Ellery?  You’ve headed right for the chapel.”

Ellery’s reply was hurried and a bit confused.  He said good night and went on.

“Laviny,” whispered the shocked Kyan, “do you think that was a—­er—­polite thing to say to a parson?  That about his turnin’ Come-Outer?  He didn’t make much answer, seemed to me.  You don’t think he was mad, do ye?”

“I don’t care if he was,” snorted Miss Pepper.  “He could tell a body where he was goin’ then.  Nobody can snub me, minister or not.  I think he’s kind of stuck-up, if you want to know, and if he is, he’ll get took down in a hurry.  Come along, don’t stand there with your mouth open like a flytrap.  I’d like to know what he was up to.  I’ve a precious good mind to follow him; would if ’twa’n’t so much trouble.”

She didn’t.  Yet, if she had, she would have deemed the trouble worth while.  For John Ellery stumbled on through the mist till he reached the “Corners” where the store was located and the roads forked.  There, he turned to the right, into the way called locally “Hammond’s Turn-off.”  A short distance down the “Turn-off” stood a small, brown-shingled building, its windows alight.  Opposite its door, on the other side of the road, grew a spreading hornbeam tree surrounded by a cluster of swamp blackberry bushes.  In the black shadow of the hornbeam Mr. Ellery stood still.  He was debating in his mind a question:  should he or should he not enter that building?